[log in to unmask] wrote:
> My understanding is that the term was coined by Serbia to describe what it
> sought to achieve in Bosnia-Herzogovina. The term was coined specifically
> to differentiate what they were doing from genocide (which is a capital
> crime under international law and outlawed by the Yugoslav constitution).
> It also happily (if you are Serb) incorporates the 'cultural' elements of
> ethnic cleansing: genocide is only about killing people; ethnic cleansing
> is about eradicating their historical presence from a region and does not
> automatically imply murder etc. (although in practice it may involve the
> use of violence).
No, genocide is not only about killing people, this is only part of
the problem.
Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide. Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly (9 December
1948) states:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of
the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group.
As far as I know, neither the UK nor the US have ratified this
convention. Section b is very interesting, as when group A seeks to
redefine ethnic group B, and that redefinition destroys the self worth
of group B, then this is in violation of the convention. This has
happened in past with minority language groups such as the first
nations in the US and Canada, and with the Celts in the UK. Since I
first put my Celtic numismatic site on line I have received a large
number of "thank you's" from people in the UK and Ireland who have
suffered such humiliation from the English.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
John Hooker
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